It's a very, very flawed game that is extremely fun to explore and kill shit in, but I'm shocked and disappointed by the fact that it's more Dragon's Dogma 1.5 than a true sequel.

I'm not a Dragon's Dogma 1 True Believer, but this game is certainly better in most respects than the first, at least in the ways that matter to me: the RE Engine, while taxing, creates some of the best looking open world environments I have ever seen and the simple act of walking through it with my awesome armor is a feeling not a whole lot of games can get right.

It truly felt like I was adventuring with my merry band and killing goblins in the most hardcore way. Picking a direction, finding chests, exploring (repetitive) caves, and hitting stuff VERY hard with my VERY big sword is when this game truly shines. It was an 83 hours very well spent, and I can see myself going for another round to max out other vocations, polish off some loose ends, and just kill more shit. When the game clicks, it clicks hard; it also helps that I gel very well with the art direction DD2 improved upon. It kept the fantasy very low, which is rare in the world of video games.

But other than the moment-to-moment combat, the rest of the game is either middling or flat out awful. The story is trite, the characters (if you can call them that) are as deep as my glass of whiskey at the end of a hard week, and the repetition is about as bad as the original game 12 years ago.

The enemy variety is better for sure, but still the same basic templates: Saurians, Goblins, Ogres, Dragons... there are different flavors depending on the region of the various monsters, but in the end you're still fighting hob goblins and harpies for dozens of hours.

The traveling, too, was a PR scam. On one hand, yes, the amount of friction--the current buzzword--is something I personally look for in most of my games. Classic MMOs, old CRPGs, a Souls games, I enjoy finding ways to mitigate a game's difficulty or lack of convenience with the given tools and hope that the journey to breaking them wide open is fun. And while I mostly had fun, especially in the early hours, what a fucking lie: the map is NOT interesting to travel long length of time with extremely limited fast travel. I want to complete quests, upgrade my armor, rest at an inn, but unless I have a ferrystone and a portcrystal that is functional, I'm going to have to suffer through stamina management and powerful nighttime foes and pray that I'm not ambushed at a camp site so I can get my health back and hoof it the rest of the way.

And I still haven't touched upon the awful quests themselves, or the terrible, terrible story, or the nonsensical lore, or the lifeless NPCs, or the performance on PS5 and PC... the list goes on and on to make for a frustrating game with extremely potent highs and so very many prickly lows.

I still recommend the game, I still love it for what it is, but they need to do better on the next one. If Square can get their shit together after 4 years for part two of the FFVII Remake, Capcom has no excuse to simply give us another soft reboot.

Best 7/10 I've played in a while.